I'm a Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, a writer here and there on this and that and strangely, one of the global experts on the metal scandium, one of the rare earths. An odd thing to be but someone does have to be such and in this flavour of our universe I am. I have written for The Times, Daily Telegraph, Express, Independent, City AM, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer and online for the ASI, IEA, Social Affairs Unit, Spectator, The Guardian, The Register and Techcentralstation. I've also ghosted pieces for several UK politicians in many of the UK papers, including the Daily Sport.

Microsoft Surface's Liquid Metal Is Not The Same As Apple's LiquidMetal

This is going to be slightly confusing for everyone out there now that Microsoft has announced the Surface, the case of which is made of liquid metal. For we’ve also got Apple with a licence to use the patent on LiquidMetal. A sole licence to use it in fact. So, err, where has Microsoft got theirs from?

The answer is that the phrase liquid metal means two rather different things and one meaning applies to Microsoft and the other to Apple.

The Microsoft Surface tablet is constructed from magnesium and manufactured using liquid metal. Microsoft claims the magnesium, PVD finish is the first of its kind in the PC market. Called VaporMg, the case is melted down in the manufacturing process and then moulded to the details needed for the design.

There are engineers out there who would wince at that description but it’s reasonable enough as far as it goes (the winces would be because that would also apply to a casting which isn’t the point of liquid metal at all).

Apple has secured exclusive rights to Liquidmetal Technologies’ IP, extending sole access to the company’s unique metal until February 2014.

The original $20m agreement expired in February 2012. However, a new filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows the date has been extended by two more years.

Liquidmetal is an alloy that is strong and resistant to corrosion and scratches, and has a similar moulding ability to that of thermoplastics.

You can see how people might get confused, eh?

The answer is that “liquid metal” is a standard phrase. Most certainly not anything that can be made into anyone’s exclusive IP. What it is is a form of metal.

Normally, as you cool a metal from molten, crystals will form inside the bar, plate or sheet. This weakens the piece of metal itself: makes it more likely to crack for example. Much of the art of alloying is to add the right mixtures of metals to reduce these problems while increasing your ability to make other changes to the shape. Liquid metal is a way of cooling the metal very quickly indeed (early methods used cooling of millions of degrees per second) and so getting your metal into a solid state before the crystals could form. This means that your piece of metal is now “amorphous” and the technical term for that is “glass”. The liquid in liquid metal doesn’t refer to it having been liquid before you cooled it: it is that glasses are a liquid. Yes, I know, oddness abounds, but technically they are, however solid they seem. Largely because they’re amorphous you see. “Metal glass” means very much the same thing.

So, that’s how we get “liquid metal”. The advantage of it is that being amorphous, without those crystals and flaws, we can use less of it, a thinner piece of it, to get any particular level of strength that we might desire. In making tablets or laptops this means that we can make them lighter for any particular strength desired. Lighter is good so that’s why it’s being used.

That Microsoft’s liquid metal is based upon magnesium makes sense in one way. That’s a very light metal anyway so the case should be, for whatever strength they decided they needed, very light. A slight eyebrow was raised though: magnesium is flammable at a rather low temperature. Get it up to 650 o C and it’ll burn and just keep burning. I had to go and look up what battery fires get to: it seems to be about 550 o F. Yes, the numbers look close together but there is a large gap between those two in C and F. So no problem there then.

Which leaves us with Apple’s LiquidMetal. This is a liquid metal and the desire to use it comes from the same as the above benefits. The difference is that LiquidMetal TM (or the patent for it if they’ve not trademarked it) is a different and specific allow which has been optimised for the creation of moulded parts from liquid metal. Rather than being magnesium based it seems to be zirconium with copper, nickel and niobium (that latter in only one formulation I think). Straying a little away from what I actually know and into a surmise. That Apple alloy looks like the raw ingredients will be more expensive than the Microsoft one. But the claim is that it requires less urgent cooling to still remain amorphous. That could be a significant energy saving which may or may not over ride that higher raw materials cost.

The bottom line here being that Microsoft’s use of the phrase “liquid metal” is meaning one of the entire class of liquid metals or metal glasses. Apple’s use of the word “LiquidMetal” means one particular set of such alloys from one particular company. “Liquid metal” is available to anyone to use as a description. “LiquidMetal”, for the moment at least, only to Apple.

Just as an aside I was told a decade ago that a scandium/yttrium liquid metal would be the perfect (as in, not possible to be better) material to make golf club driver heads from. That may be so but no one we talked to really thought that anyone would want to pay $5,000 just for the materials that the head would be made from: that would be the raw material cost, before anyone started to think about actual manufacturing.

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Magnesium is not flammable when in a molded form. You’d need to shred flakes or filings of it off and only those would be able to catch fire. There are racing rims out there made of magnesium. This is something that is learned in 6th grade science class.

I stand corrected. Mag alloy are used now for racing rims, but classic cars had pure magnesium. They were prone to pits from corrosion and when there was an accident, the sparks were insane. In theory you could start them on fire, but it takes an insane amount of energy to get a solid block started on fire. If said rim was in an accident, the cracks and shavings would increase the chance. You can’t just hold a torch up to it and it’ll start on fire like a ribbon of magnesium would in science class, which only takes 800F. I am kinda curious how a block of magnesium is created now without some crazy chemical reaction happening burning down the entire building.

This is filled with metallurgical and other physical property errors. Liquid (please review even the Wikipedia def.) Also note the difference between crystalline and non-crystalline; this is what the above article is attempting to quantify. Glass is amorphous or non-crystalline it is not liquid, not even close. Also, the attempt to explain that somehow non-crystalline metals have an advantage over crystalline is nonsensical. “Normally, as you cool… weakens…” You know this is true from where? Your automobile couldn’t function without those tiny crystals and their horrid interfaces.

Personally, I read this as a convoluted bash on Microsoft. So much is implied that Apple created a metal “Apple’s LiquidMetal” or somehow Apple has phenomenal engineers and scientists making useful things out of it. Microsoft is simply trouncing on the “liquid metal” terminology and that is simply marketing.

This entire article needs to be retracted and re-written from a marketing point of view.

Connecting the dots between Liquidmetal Technologies Inc. and Apple Inc. is easy after reading the SEC disclosure. However, what appears confirmatory is the November 2011 disclosure that Liquidmetal had struck a strategic partnership with Materion (MTRN), a large and long-established manufacturer of metal alloys (formerly named Brush Wellman). http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20111130006786/en/Liquidmetal%C2%AE-Technologies-Materion-Brush-Announces-Strategic-Partnership

I am guessing that Apple, Liquidmetal, and Materion are working together on this project, but I have not found any statement anywhere where Materion is specifically named as working with Liquidmetal on the Apple configurations. For example, Liquidmetal might have struck that agreement with Materion for other applications. However, it does strike me as potentially interesting that you have the three key resources for an end product: Consumer Product (Apple), Intellectual Property rights Liquidmetal), and Scale Manufacturing (Materion).

Materion has the only significant source of beryllium in the world and also has the scale manufacturing capacity to handle Apple’s volume. Beryllium (number 4 on periodic table of elements) is 1/3 the weight of aluminum and 6 times the stiffness of steel. So, no doubt, it is the beryllium that makes the Liquidmetal alloy work in the speculated Apple case.

From my understanding, Microsoft’s use of the term “liquid metal” was to describe their Magnesium in its molten state (liquid). I don’t believe their VaporMG case is a metallic glass, thus your entire article would appear to be a moot point.

If it really is amorphous magnesium then this is an interesting development. Is there any hint as to which country it comes form? As an example of amorphous Mg you can check the patent application US20050279427 (you can find on worldwide.espacenet.com). See for example Mg80Cu15Gd5 – if it is such an alloy it won’t be cheap – Gadolinium is expensive. Other amorphous Mg alloys contain Ag, Pd, Y and others – also not cheap

If on the other hand it is just normal high pressure die cast or thixomolded Mg alloy (e.g. AZ91 – Mg-9%Al-1%Zn) then this would be a major con as almost every electronic device uses this already.

Liquid Metal, the one Apple has licensed, is a glass, as mentioned, but it is not metal, it is a synthetic diamond alloy, according the the bulk material supplier. It is stronger titanium or stainless steel and lighter than aluminum. The interesting thing, other than the hardness and weight, is that it can use plastic injection molding machines and because there is almost no shrinkage, the mold design can be very accurate and intricate. It also products a surface finish that rivals polished machine parts. The same Liquid Metal is and has been available, under Liquid Metal licensed brand names, for anything other than consumer electronics, where Apple holds the exclusive rights. It is being used in aerospace, body armor and is probable the best material ever for surgical tools and equipment. The material is expensive, but because it can be mass product finished products with plastic injection molding machines, it saves manufacturing time and labor costs. over manually forged or molded and machined parts.